Greens

Zack Polanski calls for internal rule reforms to give party leaders greater control over policy after Zionism vote.

Zack Polanski, the leader of the United Kingdom’s Green Party, has proposed a potential overhaul of his party’s democratic mechanisms, calling for the leader to have larger control over strategic direction.

The appeal came in an article published in The Guardian on Sunday after party members passed a motion declaring that Zionism is racism at their annual conference on October 4 in a divisive vote.

Polanski also failed to grab a parliamentary seat in the wake of the row with Israel in a by-election.

The Labour Party won the election for the parliamentary seat vacated by former leader Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras on Friday, fending off a strong challenge from the left-wing Green Party in a boost for British Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

“Our party democracy must now evolve to meet that – creating wider engagement for members, giving leaders more responsibility to set the party’s strategic direction, and making our processes as robust and accessible as possible,” he wrote.

“Above all, that unity must be deployed in the service of changing this country for the better,” the Green Party leader added.

Criticism over vote on motion

Polanski also replied to the criticisms of him for not participating in the vote on the motion on Zionism.

“I have been asked why I was not present for the vote. The answer is that my priority was fighting a hugely consequential by-election for our party,” he said, adding that he put all his “energy into the race in Holborn and St Pancras”.

He admitted that some members feel “let down” by his decision not to make an appearance there.

The Green Party’s motion, which called for “Palestinian liberation, the right of return, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), and a full arms embargo against Israel” was criticised by Jewish groups, other parties and most Green Party MPs.

After conceding defeat in the fiercely contested by-election, Polanski answered his critics, saying he would stay on as leader.

He was barred from entering Israel after his party backed a motion to define Zionism as racism.

London, United Kingdom– At a meeting organised by a Muslim group in London ahead of a closely watched by-election, candidates from the Green and Liberal Democrat parties made their cases to residents beside empty seats. Their Labour and Conservative peers did not turn up.

Labour candidate Sagal Abdi Wali, a Somali-Muslim woman, told The Guardian she did not attend because she had a prior obligation and the invite had come too late. But the organiser, the Camden Muslim Network, pushed back, saying that she was invited earlier.

Fifteen candidates are in the race for former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s old seat, including Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, who hopes to become a member of parliament.

Since the seat was created in Holborn and St Pancras in 1983, the Labour Party has held it. Starmer was first elected in 2015 and held it until his resignation, which triggered the by-election.

At the meeting, the conversation ranged from local issues such as housing to Israel and Palestine.

Lib Dem candidate Patrick Stillman said his party had long called for Palestinian statehood but would not support a full boycott.

But Polanski had a different opinion.

“I think the Labour government’s position is deeply cynical to apologise over Gaza, to recognise that mistakes have been made but to continue to sell arms to Israel, a country that’s committing a genocide,” he said to applause, adding that his party, which recently voted to describe Zionism as racism, supports a full boycott.

‘Vote Palestine’

In leaflets sent to constituency residents, the Green Party focused on Abdi-Wali’s time as a Labour councillor and, more recently, as leader of Camden council – a role she secured in May.

One reads: “Bring change, Replace Labour, Vote Green”. On its reverse: “Every single Camden Labour councillor refused to sign the Palestine solidarity pledge or support pension fund divestment. Only Greens continue to stand firm on Palestine.”

Last month, Abdi-Wali spoke to the Camden New Journal, a local newspaper, about Gaza and the Green Party’s leaflets.

It was “obviously inaccurate” to say the Labour council did not feel strongly about the issue, she told the paper. “I want to focus on making sure that we’re able to put the message of what [Foreign Secretary] Ed Miliband is now doing with the government and on Palestine and Israel and Gaza and the West Bank.”

In January, Camden Friends of Palestine (CFOP), a local group that formed in response to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, presented a petition to the local council with 4,000 signatures calling for the council to divest its pension fund from companies involved in Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Abdi-Wali, then a Labour councillor, did not support the motion. Rather than committing to divestment, most councillors voted to refer the question to the pension board for review.

“My impression of her and her politics is that she’s just really incredibly silent on everything, if there isn’t a career motive for her, and that’s kind of disappointing,” said 38-year-old Shadin, a resident and CFOP organiser, who plans to vote for Polanski.

“Watching a livestreamed genocide has made a lot of people that I know … disengage from mainstream politics or parliamentary politics”.

Like many London constituencies, a key issue is housing.

According to a “2026 state of the borough” report by Camden council, 8,380 households were on the waiting list for social housing at the end of March 2025, “an increase of 9.5 percent on the year before.”

On Friday, in the constituency’s more affluent area of Primrose Hill, one resident said they would vote for Labour in the upcoming election, while another believed that regardless of who wins, life will not change.

In Camden, another resident told Al Jazeera that while they live in the area, they were not aware of the election, as Labour canvassers buzzed to gain entry into a nearby estate in the background.

As both parties make their final efforts to secure victory, recent polls predict a close race.

In the 2024 general election, Starmer won the seat with 49 percent. Andrew Feinstein, a pro-Palestine independent candidate came second, with 19 percent. The British gambling firm Ladbrokes and Stats for Lefties, which examines polling, both predict Labour will win.

The United Kingdom’s Green Party has voted to define Zionism as a form of racism, drawing condemnation from the Israeli government.

In a binding vote held at the party’s conference over the weekend, members voted to usher in the new definition as well as a series of other strongly pro-Palestine policies.

However, just as the resolution has drawn international criticism, it has also proved internally controversial with four of the party’s five members in parliament opposing it.

Israel on Monday banned party leader Zack Polanski from the country just a day before the politician faces a by-election as he runs in the London constituency that former Prime Minister Keir Starmer represented.

Zionism emerged as a political ideology in the late 19th century. It called for the creation of a Jewish homeland at a time of rising anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews in Europe. Theodore Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist considered the father of political Zionism, originally proposed an independent and colonial Jewish state in either Palestine or Argentina.

Here’s what we know about what the Greens have said:

What is the resolution?

The Greens endorsed the motion to equate Zionism with racism by a vote of 1,022 to 813.

In addition, the party restated its “commitment to Palestinian liberation” and called for the “establishment of a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine”.

The party also recommitted to its support of Palestinians’ right of return as well as to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.

“The real, material, manifestation of Zionism has been the historic and ongoing dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession, disenfranchisement and destruction of Palestinians,” a Green Party statement said.

A  significant number of party members, including four of its five MPs, were against parts of the resolution, exposing divisions within the party.

Codeputy leader Rachel Millward said in a post on X that while the party is committed to “stop the genocide”, the term Zionism means “different things to different people, … so I personally do not think the policy helps us do the work we all want to”.

Meanwhile, Polanski, who is Jewish and was away campaigning during the vote, told journalists afterwards that if Zionism equates to the displacement of Palestinians, “that is clearly racist.”

Polanski said he, however, did not support the reference to a single Palestinian state and external entities should not decide what a future state would look like.

How has Israel responded?

Israel has accused the party of legitimising “terrorism”, and senior officials equated it to anti-Semitism.

“The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle,” the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote on social media.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said it would “deliberately endanger Jews and Israelis everywhere”. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the party was “racist”.

The Green Party has rejected equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and reiterated its stance against “any form of discrimination or harassment”.

“We know there is no conflict between supporting the rights of Palestinians and the rights of Jewish people,” Polanski and other senior party members said in a statement on Sunday.

Has Zionism been equated to racism before?

Yes. In 1975, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that “determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

The vote was sponsored by the Soviet bloc and the Arab League. It passed after 72 countries, largely from the Middle East and Africa, voted for it. Israel and 34 other countries – chiefly from the West – were against it. Thirty-two other countries abstained.

Just a year before, at the 1974 General Assembly, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had given his “olive branch” speech at the General Assembly.

About the same time, African countries opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa, which was increasingly allying with Israel, had resolved separately that the Israeli government was “racist” and both had an “imperialist origin.”

Also, in 1975, at the first international women’s conference, held in Mexico City, attendees decided there would be no international peace outside the “elimination of foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid” and all other forms of “racial discrimination”.

However, the General Assembly vote proved controversial. Chaim Herzog, then-Israeli ambassador to the UN and later president, told the assembly in a speech that it was “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance” and proceeded to rip up copies of the resolution in front of the audience.

The US too accused the UN of making “anti-Semitism international law”.

In December 1991, the US, under President George HW Bush, stepped up a campaign to revoke the resolution with Bush declaring at the UN that equating Zionism with racism “is to reject Israel itself” and to “challenge its right to exist”.

Israel also insisted it would not participate in the Madrid Peace Process to continue negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders if the resolution was not cancelled.

After much pressure from the US, an overwhelming majority of countries voted for its revocation – 111 to 25, including European and African countries.

Who else equates Zionism with racism?

Jewish Voice for Peace, the American anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian advocacy group, has also named Zionism as a movement that creates a “racist hierarchy with European Jews at the top”.

In a February statement, the group reiterated its stance against what it called the “colonial ideology” of Zionism’s founders.

Similarly, in the United Kingdom, an employment tribunal in 2024 backed anti-Zionist activist and professor David Miller, who was earlier sacked from his post at the University of Bristol in 2021 for his views that the movement was “inherently racist”.